


Fight or Flight

by thirty2flavors



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-23
Updated: 2015-02-23
Packaged: 2018-03-14 17:39:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3419678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thirty2flavors/pseuds/thirty2flavors
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ellie knows Tess is sizing her up, because she’s doing exactly the same.</p><p>Set mid-2x07, waiting for Hardy to wake up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fight or Flight

**Author's Note:**

> That tiny bit of awkwardness and tension we saw between Ellie and Tess in 2x06 intrigued me, so I wanted to explore it. They seem to be just the slightest bit territorial and uneasy around each other. In particular I’ve found Tess’ motivations especially hard to pin down, and often my solution to that is fic, so here we are.

Tess answers the door when she knocks, and Ellie finds herself blinking in surprise as the door swings open.

“Um, hi,” she says, mentally chastising herself. They’d spoken on the phone last night. What else was she expecting?

“Good morning,” Tess chimes, and she even punctuates it with a smile, in case the words themselves aren’t enough to distinguish her from the actual homeowner. “He’s still asleep.”

“Wow,” Ellie jokes, “a ‘good morning’? I must have the wrong house.” Somehow the smirk Tess gives in response feels like a colder reception than the blank stare she’s come to expect from Alec Hardy. Ellie looks down as she brushes past Tess into the living room, reaching for the zip of her windbreaker. “Anyway, I went round to the cottage this morning. Claire’s gone.”

Only once she looks up at Tess, jacket unzipped, does Ellie realize she hasn’t actually been invited in. Judging from the way Tess is watching her, it hasn’t gone unnoticed.

“Oh,” Ellie mutters, “Um. Sorry. I usually just… let myself in.”

Only as the words leave her mouth does Ellie notice how strange they sound, and she smiles self-consciously. With someone else she supposes it might be rude, but since it’s almost impossible to top the level of rudeness Alec Hardy brings to the table on a daily basis, she’s never much thought about it until now.

Tess raises her hands and shrugs. “Not my house,” she says, although Ellie still feels the slightest bit like an intruder. “Was just about to make some tea, would you like some?”

“That’d be lovely, thanks.”

Tess moves into the kitchen, and Ellie stays behind to hang her jacket over the back of a chair. The door to the bedroom is open, and she chances just a quick glance at its sleeping occupant before looking away. It’s silly – she’s sat at his bedside in hospital twice now, and they’ve shared a bloody bed – but somehow, with the noise of Tess milling around in the kitchen, Ellie feels like she’s about to be caught doing something she shouldn’t. It’s the same way she’d felt when Tess had shown up at the hospital.

She’s not sure what it means, but she’s _very_ sure she doesn’t want to think about it right now, so she joins Tess in the kitchen.

“Like I was saying,” she carries on, “Claire’s gone, the cottage is empty, but I did find a bit of ash in the sink. I think she’s burnt the photo.”

Tess busies herself with the kettle. “Are you sure it was the same pendant? It wasn’t exactly unique looking.”

Ellie bristles but takes a deep breath. “Pretty sure, yeah. The Gillespies have a photo of Pippa wearing it. Plus Claire acted all weird when I saw it, I don’t think she remembered it was in there. And if she’s burnt it—”

“Right,” says Tess, in that vague way that might mean _you’re right_ or might mean _if you say so_. “Well, we can’t prove it now.”

She pours a cup of tea and holds it out, and on instinct Ellie helps herself to some sugar before Tess can offer any. She can feel the other woman watching her, and the prospect of needing to justify this, too, irritates her.

“You know, it’s funny,” Tess continues, sparing Ellie the effort of breaking the silence. “I’m not sure Alec’s ever made a work friend before. You might be the first.” She says it with a conspiratory smile and raised eyebrows. “Think just about everyone at our department hated him.”

It’s meant like an olive branch, a schoolgirl gossiping with a classmate about the teacher. Typically, Ellie relishes any opportunity to take the piss out of the grumpy bastard. But here, now, standing in his kitchen, talking to his ex-wife, while he sleeps off major surgery… That crosses a line Ellie wasn’t aware she had.

Instead she shrugs. “Well, most of Broadchurch hates me now, so I guess we’re well suited.”

Like most people, Tess is unprepared for this level of self-deprecating honesty from a near stranger. She smiles thinly and takes a sip of her tea before she turns and walks back into the living room, and Ellie follows with a faint sense of misplaced victory.

This is the third time she’s met Tess, and apart from her reluctance to reopen the case, Tess has been nothing but pleasant each time. Still – and perhaps it’s something she’d only notice now, after Danny, and Joe, and the trial – Ellie is sure a layer of frostiness lurks under the veneer of warmth. There’s an element of suspicion in Tess’ behaviour that the Ellie Miller of a year ago would never have noticed and the Ellie Miller of today not only recognizes but understands.

Ellie knows Tess is sizing her up, because she’s doing exactly the same.

 _Christ_ , she thinks. _Detectives. How does anyone put up with us?_

Tess stops in front of the wall that Ellie has turned into a makeshift pinboard, covered in clippings and photos and notes, and runs her hand gently down the map of the Sandbrook area. Something sad settles on her face even as she smiles, and she sighs, shaking her head. “Look at this. He’s obsessed.”

“Oh, well, that was me, actually.” At Tess’ surprised stare, she shrugs. “Bit too much caffeine the other night,” she says by way of explanation.

The surprise on Tess’ face gives way to the mixture of horror and pity that Ellie is growing accustomed to. “He’s really sucked you into this, hasn’t he?”

That feeling of defensiveness flares up again, and Ellie stands taller. Objectively, she can see where the concern might stem from. It’s a nasty case, and one that Tess has seen do horrible things to those that go near it. Twenty feet away sleeps a man who was very nearly crushed under the debris.

But Ellie’s tired of the way everyone treats her, like she’s either some delicate shell that might break at a touch, or some renewable resource to be endlessly plundered. They want help she isn’t prepared to give and turn down the help she actually offers.

“It’s been nice, actually,” she tells Tess defiantly. “Gives me something to focus on other than the trial.”

“Ah.” Tess warms her fingers on the side of her mug. “How’s that going?”

“It’s shit,” says Ellie frankly.

“I’m sorry. They’re never easy.”

To call that an understatement, Ellie thinks, would itself be an understatement. There’s “never easy”, and then there’s your son testifying in defense of your child killing husband. There’s having your own moment of weakness exploited and twisted and mutated into more than it is. Watching the lives of those you once called friends torn to shreds day after day.

But she didn’t come here to think about the Latimer case, or the trial.

“Yeah,” she says vaguely. “Oh, I wanted to ask you. The pendant, Pippa’s, when it got stolen – what happened? ‘Cause I read that article in the Echo last year, about how he took the blame for someone else, but it never said. Why would he do that? Who was it?”

Tess looks at her in surprise again, but there’s something else there, too, something harder to pin down. “He never told you?”

“No.”

Tess turns back to the Sandbrook collage, a smile on her lips that manages to be both wistful and sad.

“Me,” she admits. “It was my car.”

Ellie can’t help the way her eyebrows shoot up.

“Oh,” is all she can think of to say.

It’s as if Tess has come into focus for the first time. Words like _never easy_ and _sucked you in_ take new shape. Ellie thinks she understands, now, why Tess is so wary of this case, so unwilling to get involved. That’s one response to failure: to run as far as possible in the other direction in the hopes of leaving it behind. She can’t blame her; it’s exactly what Ellie had wanted to do when Joe’s confession had been excluded as a result of her own reckless fuck-up.

She looks over her shoulder, towards the bedroom, where she can just make out Hardy’s pale face atop a pile of pillows, looking more content in sleep than she’s ever seen him awake. She might have known, she thinks, that a man so dedicated to his job would only jeopardize it for something he loved even more.

Affection swells in her chest, and with it, renewed energy for this case. It might be tempting, but Ellie Miller isn’t going to run. Juggling her cup of tea in one hand, she picks the case files off the couch and carries them to the table at the front of the room.

“Right,” she announces. “Well. Better get to work."


End file.
